


The Train

by TheGreenMeridian



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Gen, Hugely experimental work, M/M, please be kind, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 23:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20321017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreenMeridian/pseuds/TheGreenMeridian
Summary: A journey, and all that means.





	The Train

**Author's Note:**

> So, ok. This is an absolute experiment that just sort of fell out of me when I sat down to write something completely different. I don’t know how I feel about it, and I certainly don’t know how you’re going to feel about it. That said, I think if I didn’t post this, I would regret it because my whole Valoris journey so far has been me Growing As A Writer and your feedback has been a huge encouragement to me. So, no cowardice, I’m putting it out there for your judgement!
> 
> All names and descriptions of anyone other than Boris himself are products of my own imagination and nothing more.

How long had he been on this damn train? At least he had a sleeper cabin to himself, but the bed was too short (weren’t they always?) and he was starting to get hungry. Scenery rolled by slowly, the train rattled and creaked, and he shifted for the third time in a minute, trying to find some semblance of comfort. He had despised the tedium of trains since he was a boy, at least with a car you were in control, could choose when to stop or what radio station to listen to. With a train, you were just a captive, stuck in a metal box until they let you go. He had even joked that his primary motivation for career advancement was to become important enough that they sent him on helicopters and jets, so he would never have to take a train again. And yet, here he was. Crawling through the Ukrainian countryside at the mercy of the conductor.

A knock on his door, the ticket inspector. Again. He showed his ticket, doing his best not to glare at the poor girl for not remembering him again.

“Where’s the dining car?” he grunted, and the girl looked at him apologetically.

“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t have one. I have some snacks in the guard’s cabin I can sell you?”

“Yes... yes, fine. Thank you. And some water.”

She returned quickly with a bottle of warm mineral water and a small bag of croutons.

“I’m sorry sir, this is all we had.”

He handed her some money and waved her off when she tried to count out the change. He looked at the bag of croutons. Crab flavour. Wonderful. He tossed them onto the empty bed in disgust and took a sip of his water. He should have bought a book or something. A radio. Something to pass the time at least. He had never been good at waiting for things. Patience was absolutely not one of his virtues, and it had made Chernobyl especially difficult for him at times. Far too much of that mess had involved just waiting. For men, for equipment, for calculations. Too often he was stuck, feeling useless and progressively more agitated, waiting for something. This train was reminding him far too much of it, and he could feel his muscles tensing with frustrated energy.

The train rumbled slowly into another station, indistinguishable from the rest they had been through. A drab platform, a Stalinist concrete ticket hall, and a collection of people waiting miserably for their train. He didn’t even know where it was. He doubted anyone who didn’t live here did either, it didn’t look like the sort of place that made it into people’s memories. It didn’t look like it had ever had a famous son or a place in history. The piercing chime of the PA system jolted him, and a muffled voice informed him that they would be waiting here for ‘an indeterminate amount of time’. He scoffed. At least he could get some food.

It seemed this was a common occurrence, as the platform was swarming with old women selling food and drink from trays around their necks or huge fabric bags. He took a box of varenyky from one, some kompot from another, and a small tub of blueberries from a third. The makings of a reasonable meal, and comfortingly Ukrainian. He leant against a lamppost and sparked up a cigarette, waving away any woman who tried to approach him with more wares. Smoking was a rarity for him, but being stuck on a train for several hours felt like a good enough excuse to indulge. He’d been smoking more, since the trial. The doctor told him he was only agitating his lungs but the smell comforted him. Besides, he was dying anyway, and he couldn’t find it in himself to care overmuch about doing himself damage.

He looked around at his current location. There didn’t seem to be any buildings here, other than the station. Nothing but green fields and forest as far as he could see. Where did the old women and the passengers on platform come from? he thought. Do they travel vast distances to this strange place? He couldn’t fathom why. Such a pointless station, it seemed unnecessary that it existed at all.

“Are you getting off here?” a voice said to his left. He turned and looked at a younger woman of around 40, oddly familiar to him though he couldn’t begin to place her. He opened his mouth to answer her and realised with a start that he wasn’t actually sure what his destination was. He couldn’t remember why he was taking this journey at all, come to think of it. He didn’t even know where he had gotten on.

“I... I don’t know,” he said softly, as much to himself as to the woman.

“Are you sure, Boryenka? You don’t remember how you came to be here?”

He stared at her in disbelief, a chill had gone through him when she had said his name. She was so familiar, this woman. Blue eyes, dark brown hair, thick yet graceful brows. Not a pretty woman, but striking. Slim, almost unhealthily so. Fragile.

“How do you know me? Who are you? What is this place?” he demanded, fear rising in his throat and threatening to choke him.

She laughed, a surprisingly strong and hearty noise from such a sickly looking thing.

“Look around you! We all know you, and you know us! Do you not recognise me, my little Boryenka?

And suddenly he knew her face. Mother. Here, now, on this crumbling platform. Alive. He looked around frantically, his berries falling to the floor and spilling across the concrete. A young man in uniform - his brother, smoking a cigarette and laughing with his comrades. The elderly woman who had sold him varenyky, he knew her only from photos but that was his mother’s grandmother. The man reading a newspaper on the bench, unmistakably his father. He groped wildly behind him for the lamppost, dizzy and afraid.

“Oh, my son. You didn’t know where you were, did you?”

“What is this?!”

His mother drew him into a tight embrace and he stooped to meet her, tears falling freely from his eyes at the feel of her arms around him after all this time.

“You’re dead, sweetheart. I would scold you for smoking but I don’t imagine smoking will make much difference to you here.”

Dead. He couldn’t be dead. Surely he would know if he were dead? Or rather, he wouldn’t know anything of anything. There wasn’t an afterlife. He’d buried his family, one by one, and accepted they would never see each other again. That was the end of it, death was a final line drawn under everything.

Wasn’t it?

“Do you want to see anyone, sweetheart? Yaroslav, perhaps? I know he would like to see you again.”

“Yaroslav is dead, mother!”

She chuckled again, and he heard pity there.

“Yes, he is. Shot in the war. And Vitalya, she starved in the famine. My Mykyta, he left us as soon as he was born. Too many children I’ve buried, Boryenka. But not you, you were always too stubborn to die.”

His mother’s kind patience. God, how he had longed for it. Even all these years later, he still wished for her in his darkest moments. He had thought of her often in Chernobyl.

“But... I was on a train. This doesn’t make any damn sense!” he said angrily, and she took his hand, guiding him to an empty bench so he no longer had to support himself on weak legs.

“I know, it’s confusing. But it’s how you got here, nonetheless. We didn’t all come by train though, sweetheart. Your brother, he was on a ship, he came to a dock. I walked through the forest to a big village festival in a meadow.”

“A dock? We’re nowhere near water, there can’t be a dock!”

“This is just a... a waiting room, I suppose. This is where you decide what you want to do with yourself. Everyone’s waiting room is different. But we know when someone we love is coming, and we always go to greet them. I can’t really explain how, Boryenka. There is a lot about this place that I know, but far more that I don’t.”

He leaned against her small frame and fought with the urge to weep.

“You know, it hurts me deeply to see how you arrived and the waiting room you’ve ended up in. What went wrong for you, my darling, that you were so miserable when you died?”

He began sobbing now, decades of repressed emotion overwhelming him, pouring out of him like infected blood from a lanced wound. His mother simply held him tighter and rocked him gently, shushing him and patting his back as she had done when he was a child, regardless of his father claiming it would make him weak.

“They’re still boys, Kimka!” he began quietly, remembering his mother’s stubborn refusal to stop comforting him.

“And you’ll still be doing this when they’re men!” she said, imitating his father’s grumbling. “Well, he was right after all, wasn’t he?”

She swatted at him playfully and he laughed softly, despite the tears running down his cheeks.

“I always wanted to be someone you’d be proud of, and I...”

“Oh, hush. I’m plenty proud, my love. Such a big career you had! And so strong, at the end, with all you went through.”

He sat up straighter and his mother handed him a handkerchief. He admired her embroidery, before wiping his face and trying to compose himself, his shoulders square and his jaw set.

“I could have done better. Chernobyl, I was too weak to do what was right. Too much of a damn coward. I was until the end. People died because of me.”

“Yes. But people lived because of you too, don’t forget that, Boryenka.”

He didn’t argue with her any further, there wasn’t any point. Everyone had always thought his stubbornness must have come from his great bull of a father, but the fact was, it was all a result of this small slip of a woman beside him.

“You asked if I was getting off here. Do I have a choice?”

“Yes. You always have a choice, Boryenka.”

“And if I get back on the train?”

She sighed and took his hand.

“Now you listen to me, Boryenka. That train, you have to get back on it. Do you hear me? You’re not to get off here. Not yet.”

“But what-“

“Something you lost is waiting for you. You need to go and find it. I can’t tell you more, but all of us had the option to keep going, and you only get it once. Those who didn’t go, they all regret it.”

“I don’t understand, you’re not making sense. Something I lost? What is it?”

“I don’t know sweetheart, only you can know that. I have an inkling, but They won’t let us tell you. I don’t know why. I think it’s a test, all of this. You have to prove you’re willing to sacrifice for it, I think. I can’t tell you any more. The choice is up to you darling, of course it is, but please, get back on the train. You were miserable when you died, I think you’ll likely be miserable if you don’t see what’s ahead.”

He wanted to ask her more, so much more, but the ticket girl began ringing a bell and the train was powering back up again. He had to choose now. He stood and gave the platform one last sweep. He had hoped he had missed him on his first inspection of the faces but no. He wasn’t here.

Boris thought he knew what was waiting for him if he finished his journey. He looked at his mother, she was beaming at him encouragingly. She knew what he’d chosen to do.

“That’s it son, go, get back on board. You’ll be ok.” He drew her into a crushing embrace, his heart warming as she squeaked in protest at the strength of his arms around her. No more needed to be said, he knew. He strode towards the train, climbing up the stairs with renewed vigour, and waved back at his family as the train began to pull away from the station. He spotted friends in the crowd, a favourite teacher, soldiers from his unit. Dozens of people he had loved in his life were watching him leave with smiling faces. He didn’t know for certain if he was allowed to return. He hadn’t asked, and he had known automatically that she couldn’t have told him, though she had hinted enough. But the absence of one face in particular on the platform was all the motivation he needed. If he was waiting for him at the other end, he had to find out. He’d let him down too many times before. Let them both down, with his own inability to face his feelings before it was too late. Not again. This time Boris would be brave. Just like he had been.

**Author's Note:**

> thegreenmeridian.tumblr.com


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